The refusal to provide such vital prescribing data is immoral but that's big pharma, I'm afraid, but why Oxford U.?

Why Are they Hiding The HPS Data if the Benefits are so Massive?

According to Merck, the British/Oxford Heart Protection Study "proves" the benefit of 40 mg of the statin Zocor in preventing heart attack - "no matter what the starting cholesterol level."

Can we trust the Authors (the study was at least partially funded by Merck)?

Why should we care that they are keeping the data secret?

Comments by Statistician Eddie Vos (Health-heart.org)

Dear Owen,

The full HPS mortality data have
never been properly published and one of the HPS authors just asked me WHY I wanted to know, instead of coming
up with the data. One of the letter authors in Lancet Aug. 30 [who also was not
given an answer] figures they
won't ever provide these data --and that should be denounced in the Journals [project... U/C/M/P?].

I'm not a skeptic but there is nothing simpler than those morality data. NNT/y
to postpone 1 death in HPS is
~300 [at the precise moment HPS chose to report final mortality, if that helps -
but what if it was 6 months
earlier? Nobody knows].

I attach the PDF of the letters in Lancet Aug. 30, unsuccessfully asking for complete mortality data.

Only 2 of the last 4 big trials give cumulative mortality data [see link below]
but PROSPER claims no
mortality benefit, yet HPS DOES. HPS may well have been stopped at a coincidentally particularly advantageous
moment in the statistical ups and downs [as ASCOT was stopped with a small NS benefit showing, while 3 months
before the curves touched].

The refusal to provide such vital prescribing data is immoral but that's big pharma, I'm afraid, but why Oxford U.?
Think EXCEL: stopped at 11 months with a 275% [still just NS] increased rate of deaths in
lovastatin [pharma owned the study and the authors have never published anything
in Medline since [that I
could find], so they cannot be corresponded with -and a ~20% sub section that was continued was never reported
on.].

P.S. page 747 of that Lancet attachment has WHO calling a Pfizer consumer ad cam
paign in France "unethical";
that's the campaign we're trying to stop in Canada
as denounced
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/eletters/169/5/425